This application relates to the use of an RF-enabled surgical cart in an operating room environment to provide monitoring and records of the surgery and the equipment used by operating room personnel during a surgery.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,275,385 to White, which is incorporated herein by reference, discloses a personnel locating system where individuals to be located wear transmitters, and each transmitter transmits a signal which corresponds to the identity of the wearer. This information is relayed to and displayed at a central control unit. The information may also be displayed at remote terminals, used to control access to equipment or locations, or conveyed via a telephone interface to a telephone switching network to call the nearest telephone or to page the wearer of the transmitter. US Patent Publication No. 20070247316 for tracking the movement of personnel throughout a hospital using RFID tags.
US Patent Publication No. 20050149358 discloses an RFID-based system for tracking billable anesthesiology time in a surgical environment employs hand-held RFID reader devices that record and store timed anesthesia events for each surgical patient. Each patient is assigned a reader device, uploaded with patient data. Each anesthesiology professional has an identifying RFID transponder, and room transponders are located on wall or doorway of each room in the surgical suite.
US Patent Publication No. 20020188259 discloses medical supplies with smart tags, for example RFID tags.
One of the drawbacks of conventional RFID tags is their ability to function with substantial reliability in difficult environments such as environments with large metallic masses, particularly in circumstances where there may be a plurality of tags, and where the tags may be moving. One such difficult environment is a hospital operating room during surgery, where people are constantly moving and where there are large amount of metal, including the equipment such as tables, tanks for compressed gases, and pumps. The present invention provides the benefits of the general idea of using RFID tags in the type of environment found in an operating room during a surgical procedure through the use of an alternative communications protocol, which is actually shown to work with sufficient reliability to achieve the desired goals of tracking personnel and equipment within the room using a transceiver while not interfering with electrical equipment such as life support equipment functioning in the operating room during the surgery.